The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this, I have endeavoured in my case to do.

[Sherlock Holmes quoting:] "There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman."

"I am glad of all details," remarked my friend, "whether they seem to you to be relevant or not."

It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.

...but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you, until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see.

Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing," answered Holmes thoughtfully. "It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different."

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know.

"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago."

"The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime."

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.

I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be.

There is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

"I think I had better go, Holmes."

It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes’ requests, for they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery.

"You are Holmes, the meddler."

My friend smiled.

"Holmes, the busybody!"

His smile broadened.

"Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!"

Holmes chuckled heartily.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.

"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge."